Brewers benefit from Sexson trade

[645]

No one enjoyed having Richie Sexson on the Milwaukee Brewers' roster last season more than manager Ned Yost.

On and off the field, Sexson was everything a manager could have asked for in a ball player, to the point of playing every inning of every game.

Yet Yost is the first to admit the Brewers are a better team with the players they acquired from Arizona over the winter for Sexson.

"They changed the complexion of the entire team," said Yost, whose club opens a three-game series against Arizona tonight at Miller Park.

In trading Sexson to the Diamondbacks, the Brewers parted with their best player as well as one of the top sluggers in the major leagues. In his three full seasons in Milwaukee, the 6-7 first baseman averaged 40 home runs and 117 runs batted in.

But the Brewers finished in last place the past two seasons with Sexson, in large part because they didn't have enough established, reliable players. In dealing Sexson and expendable reliever Shane Nance to the Diamondbacks, the Brewers acquired three-fourths of their starting infield, a No. 1 catcher and a starting pitcher, not to mention a minor league pitching prospect.

Not a bad haul, especially considering the rest of the baseball world knew Brewers general manager Doug Melvin had to peddle Sexson to meet payroll cutbacks.

"Doug did a great job getting all of those players," said Yost. "They've been perfect fits on our club."

In exchange for Sexson, the Brewers acquired shortstop Craig Counsell, second baseman Junior Spivey, first baseman Lyle Overbay, catcher Chad Moeller, left-hander Craig Capuano and pitching prospect Jorge de la Rosa.

None of those players is setting the world on fire at present, but they provide depth the rebuilding Brewers desperately needed until their farm system bears big-league fruit.

Spivey leads the team with 10 RBI and is batting a respectable .279. Counsell is hitting only .244 but has been a defensive anchor and steadying influence at shortstop.

Moeller (.207) and Overbay (.218) still must prove they can contribute on a regular basis in the major leagues, and Yost believes they will. As for Capuano, a quadriceps strain suffered Sunday in Houston probably will shelve him for a while.

The way Yost sees it, what the Brewers lost in power they gained in potential base runners, though the offense sputtered badly over the weekend against Houston's tough pitching staff.

"We try to win bases," said Yost. "Eight-five percent of the time, whoever gets the most base runners on will win the game, so you try to capture bases.

"They're the total package for me, every single one of them. They're all great competitors, they're all fundamentally sound, they're all winning-type players. There's nothing that I don't like about any of them."

Counsell, a Milwaukee native, is anything but flashy. He has yet to make an error in 12 games at short, however, and brings a presence to a club loaded with players still trying to find their way in the big leagues.

"He's a necessity to a ball club," said Moeller. "He's going to say things that need to be said. He's going to show you the way it's supposed to be done out there, every day.

"Nothing's going to happen from lack of preparation, lack of effort. Guys are just kind of drawn to him. He's the kind of guy you like to have on a team. He's such a quality guy."

Normally, when a team integrates a high number of new players into the mix, it takes time for everyone to feel comfortable together. Yet, almost immediately, the Brewers grew close as a club during spring training, forming a bond that didn't escape Yost's notice.

"They're better than good guys. They're great guys," said Yost. "All of them work hard and play hard. And they're great in the clubhouse."

Why did the new players fit in so quickly?

"I think most of us were pretty close already, from playing together in Arizona," said Moeller. "And we already knew a lot of these guys.

"Everybody gets along real well. The joking started almost immediately. It's like we've always been here. When you look at it, very few players here actually came up with the Brewers. Except for (Geoff) Jenkins and (Ben) Sheets, we've all come from other teams."

[645]

<b><font size=4>More cheers or jeers?</font>

Sexson doesn't think fans will be mad at him</b>

Richie Sexson became accustomed to hearing cheers at Miller Park over the past three years, and he doesn't expect that to change just because he'll be wearing a different uniform tonight.

"It wasn't like I chose to leave, so I don't think they can be mad at me," said Sexson, who was traded by the Milwaukee Brewers to the Arizona Diamondbacks over the winter.

"I really haven't thought about it too much, just because I've been through it before (returning to Cleveland for interleague play). They're still going to boo me when I get a hit because I'm on the other team."

When the teams square off in the opener of a three-game series tonight, it will be Ben Sheets' job to keep Sexson in the ballpark. The big first baseman already has five home runs and 13 runs batted in for Arizona though he has struggled with a .229 batting average.

"It'll be pretty weird facing him, but I think it will be fun, too," said Sheets, who has allowed only one home run in his first three starts.

"I like Richie. He was a good teammate. Especially as a pitcher, I admire the fact that he went out there and played every day."

Sexson socked a Sheets fastball out of Maryvale Baseball Park during an exhibition contest in March, so the Brewers' ace will try to keep him guessing tonight.

"I'm going to try to get him out, I know that," said Sheets. "I don't know how I'm going to do it yet. I'll just try to keep the ball in the park."

Brewers leftfielder Geoff Jenkins, who became very close to Sexson during his 31/2 years in Milwaukee, believes fans will be gracious when he comes to the plate.

"I'm sure it will be fine," said Jenkins. "Why should the fans be mad at him? Are the fans going to boo him because he got traded? I think it will be pretty positive."

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<b><font size=4>Sexson returns to Milwaukee for only time this season</font></b>

MILWAUKEE (AP) -- Richie Sexson had a good-natured warning for Ben Sheets when the slugger returned to Milwaukee on Tuesday for the Arizona Diamondbacks' only trip to Miller Park this season.

``I told him if he strikes me out a couple of times, I'm kicking him out of my house,'' said Sexson, who is renting his area home to his former teammate.

Sexson chose to stay at the team hotel in downtown rather than at his old pad with his new tenant.

``I wasn't going to stay with him. There's not enough room for all of us and that big slobbery dog of his that he has running around,'' Sexson said. ``It's a bulldog. He's probably slobbering all over my floors.''

Sexson, who hit 133 homers in 3 1/2 seasons in Milwaukee, was traded to Arizona last winter along with reliever Shane Nance and outfielder Noochie Varner for six players, four of whom were in Milwaukee's starting lineup Tuesday night.

In addition to Chad Moeller, Lyle Overbay, Junior Spivey and Craig Counsell, the Brewers also got starting pitcher Chris Capuano and pitching prospect Jorge de la Rosa from Arizona.

The deal was a boon to both teams. The D-Backs got the power hitter they coveted and the cost-cutting Brewers filled plenty of holes while erasing Sexson's $8.6 million salary from their payroll.

``I think Milwaukee's definitely gotten better from it,'' Sexson said. ``I still root for them, I still check the papers every day to see how they're doing, and call Geoff (Jenkins) as many times as I can to see what's going on because he's one of my best friends.''

Jenkins, who signed a $23 million, three-year contract extension after Sexson was traded, said he wishes the economics of the game hadn't separated the two, but it was ultimately in everybody's best interests.

``It was a great trade for us,'' Jenkins said. ``The new guys have fit in great. To get six players, five of whom are playing with us, you say, 'Wow! That's making us a better club.'

``A lot of people look at that as the best trade of the offseason.''

Milwaukee manager Ned Yost misses Sexson's power but now has a more versatile lineup that can manufacture runs much better.

``Both teams got exactly what they needed out of the deal,'' Yost said.

Sexson, who nearly walked into the Brewers clubhouse out of habit and was cheered by the sparse crowd during introductions, said he couldn't be happier in a lineup that packs so much punch.

``We have some great players. In our lineup, there's not one or two guys that can beat you. We feel like we have four or five guys,'' Sexson said. ``So, it's definitely nice to have that cast around you, guys who can produce and drive in runs.''

[645]

<b><font size=4>Sexson deal paying off, so far</font></b>

It's just as well that Ned Yost doesn't manage Richie Sexson anymore, because if he did, he'd subdivide him.

A couple of hours before the Milwaukee Brewers' leading export was caught looking by his tenant Tuesday night, Yost was trying to explain why he was better off without him. It was clear that although the trade that sent Sexson to Arizona cost the manager 45 home runs, it left all of his optimism intact.

"Sure it would be great to mix in a big bopper with the guys we have, but I feel good about our ability to manufacture runs," he said. "I'd take the big bopper and break him into four other little pieces that are serviceable, because we'd get more chances to score runs that way."

Sexson would lend himself to that strategy more than most, because he still stood 6 feet 7 inches tall in his first appearance at Miller Park as a visitor. Approximating the math, he'd yield four 1-foot-8 players, creating a lineup that would not only draw plenty of walks but look a lot like the Brewers' payroll.

Yost believes that swapping Sexson for six players was one of those rare transactions that benefited everybody, and nothing happened Tuesday night to make him a liar.

Ben Sheets is living in Sexson's house, and Sexson said he was going to evict the Brewers starter after he struck him out, got him on a broken-bat grounder and personally turned a likely single into a fielder's choice. Luis Vizcaino struck him out, too. Meanwhile, four ex-Diamondbacks combined for eight hits.

Still, a few months have to go by before this transaction gets to be an unqualified success. For now, all we know is that the Brewers look like they're pretty good at doing what's necessary.

Sexson is a hard man to replace and a harder one to flatter. It's not everyone who gets traded for a regiment, but he laughs that off by calling himself a "throw-in" with Shane Nance. And if there's some satisfaction in being too valuable to play in Milwaukee, it doesn't appear to register with the first baseman.

"That's kind of the direction where baseball heads sometimes," he said. "We never worked on doing a long-term deal here. I knew the payroll was going down to $30 million or whatever it went to, and Geoff had to be a big chunk of it, and I would have had a big chunk. Two players with over half the salaries is hard to work from, and I understood that."

The customers appeared to understand it, too, as at least some of them greeted Sexson from their feet, although some others booed, and far more reacted from their living rooms. The crowd was extravagantly announced at 10,244 on a cold wet night. Weather will always count in this neighborhood unless they roof the parking lots.

Roofing the stadium wasn't enough to fulfill Sexson's expectations here, although he left with no complaints, going so far as to say the city doesn't get the credit it deserves.

"I enjoyed my time here," he said. "Believe it or not, I thought we could win. I thought coming in here, it was going to be a situation like Cleveland in the early '90s with the new stadium and the revenue that was going to be brought in by it. I really liked my situation coming over here. We tried the best we could."

Now the Brewers are trying again, and so is Sexson in a place where he can just pull his own oar instead of having to buy, steer, paint and scrape the whole boat.

"Things," he said, "have a way of working themselves out."

So far anyway. And when they have to.

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<b><font size=4>Tale of the tape</font></b>

Arizona first baseman Richie Sexson did not fare as well in the series as did the players for whom he was traded over the winter.

Sexson went 1 for 13 in the series, including 0 for 8 with runners in scoring position. His only hit was a double off Wes Obermueller that helped spark a four-run rally in the sixth inning Thursday.

"It was rough because we didn't win the series," Sexson said. "But I don't feel bad at the plate. I'm just not getting hits."

The four "Brewerbacks" in the series - Craig Counsell, Chad Moeller, Lyle Overbay and Junior Spivey - combined to go 16 for 42 (.380) with a homer, nine RBI, 10 runs and eight walks.

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<b><font size=4>Brewers better without Sexson</font>
Milwaukee a .500 team after offseason deal with D-Backs</b>

MILWAUKEE -- This is a story of small-market necessity acting as the mother of invention. The Milwaukee Brewers traded their best hitter and became better.

"Better" might be a relative term since the Brewers have had 11 straight losing seasons. But even this early in the season, the progress is indisputable. For instance, when the Brewers took two of three this weekend from the St. Louis Cardinals, it made their record 5-2 against St. Louis. Last year, against the Cards the Brewers were 3-13.

The Brewers took a serious problem and turned it into a potential solution. With player payroll being trimmed, they could not retain the services of their most formidable slugger, first baseman Richie Sexson. But they traded Sexson to the Arizona Diamondbacks for half of a starting team.

Second baseman Junior Spivey, shortstop Craig Counsell and catcher Chad Moeller represent upgrades at their positions for the Brewers. First baseman Lyle Overbay cannot match Sexson's power, but through 20 games, he was tied with Spivey for the Brewers lead in RBIs with 14.

Add starting pitcher Chris Capuano, who worked well before going on the disabled list with a strained quadriceps, and pitching prospect Jorge De La Rosa, now at Triple A, and you have an operation that has been given a large and much-need infusion of talent by one trade.

You saw how it worked earlier this week when the Brewers took two of three from the D-Backs.

"When Arizona was here, Richie went 1-for-13," manager Ned Yost says. "Now, Richie's capable of going 9-for-13 with seven home runs. But in that three-game series, Richie went 1-for-13. The four guys we got in that trade went 14-for-47.

"Give me the 14-for-47. You've got 34 more chances to do something because of the guys we got in that trade. The 34 more chances are what helps us. And these are guys who can compete at the Major League level. All of them."

The Brewers are careful to refer to this deal as "a trade that helped both teams." That is the polite thing to do. And it is true that Sexson filled an obvious Diamondbacks need, for a right-handed power hitter. But with the Milwaukee half of it, there was no waiting for a few years to measure the trade's impact. The Brewers became better the minute the former Diamondbacks took the field.

How did general manager Doug Melvin manage to get this much in return for Sexson, when everybody knew that Sexson, coming to the last year of his contract with Milwaukee, would have to be dealt? Melvin had even less leverage because the Brewers' intention to trim payroll had become public.

"When we were at the GMs' meetings, I had people coming to me thinking that I was just going to get rid of Richie," Melvin said Sunday. "I had to stand my ground and say that I wasn't going to trade him just to trade him. So the word got out that I had to make a good deal for the club.

"I thought what helped us a lot was when Derrek Lee got traded from the Marlins to the Cubs. If he'd have been traded to the Diamondbacks or the Dodgers, then I would have had to get the Cubs involved and that's something I didn't really want to do, seeing that they're our neighbors. The Dodgers and Diamondbacks both wanting Richie and both being in the same division, I did have some leverage there."

The trade works three ways for the Brewers. There is the obvious tangible help, the fact that there are now simply more Major League-caliber players on this club. Then there are the intangible additions.

"The thing about the players we got in this trade, it's not only their ability, it's what else they bring to the ballclub," Melvin says. "It's a professional attitude, it's a good work ethic. Everybody we talked to said these were all good guys to have on your team. They make other players better.

"Craig Counsell, at the end of the year you're going to sit down and look at his statistics, but that's not going to tell you what he contributes to our ball club. The hustle double, the tough RBI against a left-handed pitcher, the steadiness in the field. Or the work ethic of Spivey, you go downstairs after everybody's left and he's still in the weight room working out.

"And I think by getting better we've pushed our other players. I think we got to a point last year where maybe some of our regular players weren't pushed. You've got to have competition on your own roster to get better. And we do now."

The organizational bonus is that because the Brewers have now filled three more positions with Major League players, they will not have to rush some of their talented prospects. The strength of this organization is now in its farm system. The emergence of such blue-chip prospects as first baseman Prince Fielder or second baseman Rickie Weeks is considered a matter of time. But now the Brewers can afford to make that the right time.

"A lot's been made of our farm system, but I don't want to put all the emphasis on the farm system, because there's good players on this roster," Melvin says. "People say, 'Well, with Prince Fielder and Rickie Weeks, Lyle and Spivey are just here until they're ready,' kind of thing. I don't look at it that way. I don't worry about those decisions now. I'll worry about them when it happens."

"This trade was so important because it helped us take away any temptation of rushing our young players. Otherwise, we'd end up just filling these holes year by year and then you may end up pushing Prince, pushing Rickie, and maybe they're not ready and it could be disastrous. So this trade closed that gap. Now I feel that we have an opportunity to develop those young players the right way."

Doug Melvin turned an unpleasant necessity -- having to trade his most dangerous hitter -- into an opportunity to add both quantity and quality. The result won't get the Brewers into the World Series, but it has already made them significantly better.

The Brewers lost 106 games in 2002 and 94 games last season. Three weeks into this season, they are a .500 club. Winning half their games would have been merely a distant aspiration for them in the recent past. It is too early to pronounce them completely healed and respectable. But it is not too early to notice that they are far from the hapless punching bags they were a few seasons ago. They now have too many Major League players to fall into that category.

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<b><font size=4>Brewers pulled the wool over Diamondbacks' eyes</font></b>

Not since Nixon vs. McGovern in 1972 and the masked Boston bandits vs. Brinks in '50 has there been such a landslide, such a robbery.

Milwaukee Brewers vs. Arizona Diamondbacks in the Richie Sexson trade? What once merely seemed like a good idea has now officially become a fleecing.

This is no longer advantage, Brewers. This is game, set and match, Brewers.

With news Sunday that Sexson has been placed on the disabled list with a twice-injured shoulder, everyone lost big in the trade except the Brewers, who suddenly have a Ruben Studdard kind of charmed air about them in their otherwise Simon-tormented existence.

If Sexson is out for an extended period, he cannot generate big numbers in what is a contract year for him. Likewise, the Diamondbacks cannot trade damaged goods. Maybe they get to keep Sexson at a reduced rate, but there was no indication that they intended to re-sign him, especially now that a fire sale likely to include Randy Johnson seems imminent. At the very least, the Diamondbacks cannot begin to get value for Sexson.

The Brewers got value, and then some. Had they kept Sexson, they would not have all the valuable pieces - Chad Moeller, Junior Spivey, Craig Counsell, Lyle Overbay, especially Overbay - that have produced .524 baseball a quarter of the way into the season. And the thought of the Brewers saddled with an injured, maybe unmovable Sexson is too grim to consider.

There was a time when the trade seemed predicated on what kind of pitcher left-handed prospect Jorge De La Rosa could become. No more. Like Chris Capuano, De La Rosa might one day develop into a big-league starter. But now, De La Rosa, and for certain Capuano, are the gravy. The others have done their parts, and more, to swing the trade irrevocably in the Brewers' favor.

This is just one more reason to value general manager Doug Melvin and the early influence he has had on what could be a turnabout season for the franchise. In orchestrating the second-biggest trade in the city's big-league history behind the Kareem Abdul-Jabbar blockbuster, Melvin was faced with the challenge that every other GM had to know: Sexson had no intention of re-signing with the Brewers.

Even with that handicap, Melvin brokered four productive starters - including a potential rising star in Overbay - who have carried the Brewers into what might be a watershed week in the young season. If they do well at home against Los Angeles and San Diego, who knows, they might even be dangerous.

Credit Melvin, too, for not giving up on Keith Ginter after the trade that installed Spivey as the regular second baseman. Ginter has continued to demonstrate his adaptable value with the loss of Wes Helms, just as he did when Spivey went down.

The trade has also created a wealth of flexibility for the franchise. With a glut of middle infielders - Counsell, Spivey, Ginter, Bill Hall and Rickie Weeks on the way - a move is always possible. But with Helms out, the Brewers would be wise to maintain stability for now.

If Overbay continues to perform at an all-star level, the team will be dealing from one more position of strength once Prince Fielder is ready for the majors. Certainly, no one saw that benefit, with the possible exception of the Brewers scouts who recommended Overbay, when the trade was made.

There are trades, and then there are trades. For the Brewers, this one hasn't been a home run . . .

It's been a grand slam.